Page 20 of The Show Woman

19

Rites of passage

And so the road rises up to meet them, curving and winding its way through shaded lanes and plump green hills that bulge like pillows. Late morning, their first day out of Stirling, they pass glowing fields of golden rape seed where farm workers, sweat thick and salty on their brows, till the land. Above them swifts and swallows circle, great masses of birds that darken the sky with swoops and dives, before the air clears once more to brilliant blue.

Lena breathes in the fresh, clean air and stretches her legs out before her. She wonders idly how much browner they will grow over the long summer months, now her face has sprouted its inevitable crop of pale, lazy freckles. It feels good to be back on the road again, with all its infinite possibilities stretching before them. When she was young her mother often sat her on her knee as they travelled the fairs, pointing out flocks of sheep on a hill, bushels of heather, the swollen curve of a loch side.

‘Hands over eyes,’ she’d say, and Lena would clamp her damp little palms to her forehead, leaving just enough of a gap between her fingers to peer out.

‘No peeking,’ her mother said, and Lena would reluctantly force her hand shut. ‘Now, tell me everything we’ve just seen.’

Lena would list the sheep and the heather, the cow with the horns, the man stopping to have a smoke by the side of the road, conjuring up the images in her head while below, the wheels of their wagon turned beneath them.

‘And . . . open!’ When Lena took her hand away, there would be a new vista lying ahead of them, a fresh world to remember. Oh, how she misses her, the way she could make almost anything magical. I’m doing this for you, Mammy, she thinks. All for you.

She shifts in her seat. It is her turn to sit up front and drive the Clydesdale horses, while Rosie trots alongside on Tommy Pony, quite recovered now after those extra days in Stirling. He looks comical trotting next to the huge snorting beasts, like a toy horse, or one of the beauties that once sat astride Lena’s daddy’s carousel. The thought cuts through her like a shard of glass. Once upon a time, as a little girl, she had thought those horses huge, terrifying and exciting. Her daddy would lift her up on one when all the crowds had gone home and set the carousel to run just for Lena, and she would scream in delight as the horses bobbed up and down, her father watching on, satisfied and proud.

So long ago. Now she is the one with the show, and they are the ones in charge. There is no Daddy to tell her what to do, to lean on when things get hard. She misses him too, his bold shape, his comforting tobacco smell. But there is a heady freedom about it all. They can do exactly what they please, when and where they like.

‘Alright, hen?’ Violet pops her head out of the wagon and playfully tugs on Lena’s long plait. Her face is flushed. They have made the wagon as homely as possible, with four bunks, each with their own blankets, and during those extra days in Stirling Lena pinned some of her mother’s old silks on to the wall, their rich, deep colours rippling as the wagon moves. But it can get hot when it’s sunny, particularly when they are thumping along the road courtesy of two enormous shire horses.

‘Want a break yet?’ asks Violet.

‘Soon,’ Lena says. They are reaching the brow of a hill, and the horses slow as they pull their heavy load.

Rosie slows too, her forehead glistening, and she leans down and pats Tommy Pony’s flank. ‘It’s so hot,’ she shouts up to them. She seems energised by the ride, her cheeks high with colour, but Lena can see by the curve of her thin shoulders that she is also tired.

‘We’ll stop in a minute,’ Lena says. ‘Get the horses some water and you can rest those sore thighs of yours.’

Violet cackles.

‘Oh, shut up,’ says Lena, her face twitching.

‘I said nothing,’ Violet replies. ‘I am the perfect picture of innocence.’

They pull into a glade of tall lime trees, their wide green leaves shading them from the sun, tangles of wild strawberries hidden among the long grass. Carmen disappears into the trees and before long emerges with huge buckets of cool, glistening water. The horses drink as though they have never seen water before, the sweat slicked thick on their manes.

Lena produces bread and cheese, and a small bag of apples. She had gone to the big market in the town before they left Stirling and stocked up as much as possible. It could be feast or famine on the road. Sometimes you came across friendly farmers who’d give you eggs for free, or they might bring food to barter with to the shows. Many was the time her daddy had given a free ride to a man’s bairns for six hen’s eggs, or a wheel of fresh cheese.

Other places, though, they refused to even serve you. Lena remembers one occasion, when she was around seven years old in a town in the northeast, when a man, his red face mottled with deep acne scars that made Lena think of raw meat, insisted his child get a free ride on her father’s carousel. The next day he refused to let them into his baker’s shop, calling them dirty. He bent down and looked into her face and with breath that stank of rotting fish said, ‘You’re a filthy little tinker.’

Her father pulled her away, shaking his head, clutching her hand tightly while Lena tried to fight back tears. ‘They’re just flatties, Lena,’ he said. ‘They don’t understand us. Pay them no mind.’

But the incident stayed with her. They had gone hungry that night all those years ago, Lena shoving her fist in her mouth to stop the pangs in her tiny stomach. She likes to stockpile food now, know where it is, and keep it safe. If they are running low she becomes anxious and fretful, counting out the pennies she keeps in a small velvet drawstring bag that belonged, long ago, to her mother. She is forever thinking ahead to the next town, the next farm, the next showground, and the next meal.

Rosie chews her bread thoughtfully. ‘How long do you think, Lena?’

Her hair, down to her waist and a pale dusty brown, has been pulled into a low bun. A few tendrils have come loose and bob in her eyes. Violet reaches over and pushes them back for her.

‘At this pace we’ll be there by mid-morning tomorrow,’ Lena says.

‘Where is it we’re headed again?’ Carmen asks.

‘Blairgowrie,’ says Lena. ‘Nice town. Start of the Highlands.’

The rest of them contemplate this as they eat. Violet pulls off her thick boots, lets her toes wiggle in the grass. ‘I need to cool off,’ she says, unbuttoning her blouse and loosening her corset.

Rosie blushes. She puts her hands to her cheeks, but it only makes the pinkish bloom worse.

‘Come on, Rosie, there’s a good lass,’ says Violet as her corset comes off. She stands there in nothing but a pair of white bloomers that have seen better days. ‘Time for a swim.’

Rosie is trying not to look at the bold Violet, at her small, milky-white breasts, the concave stomach speckled with bluish bruises from her time on the bar. At how much she appears like a boy without her clothes, except for her magnificent mane of orange hair, loose now and so bright in the sunshine that it shimmers like a bolt of cloth.

‘You scared a wee laddie will steal your corsets, Rosie Posy?’ she says. ‘The wagon will keep us covered, don’t you worry about that.’

Rosie shakes her head, puts her hands back up to her cheeks.

‘Come on, Rosie,’ says Lena, tugging off her blouse. ‘It’s a show woman’s rite of passage, this: a dip in a stream. Give you a chance to wash that hair of yours.’

But the girl simply bites into her apple.

The stream is cool and slippery. As Lena eases her way in, her feet touch the slimy rocks below. How long had these stones lain in this secret, shaded place? Had her father once stood in this stream as a young man, stripped to the waist and cooling off on the way to the Blairgowrie fair, his hair slicked back with water as a pal dunked him under the ripples? What about her mother?

She tries to conjure her mammy’s face but it remains blurry, out of reach. Her eyes, her lips, the colour of her hair, which her father always said was brown as a berry. For a moment the grief washes over her afresh, trickles its way into her pores, through her spine, all the way down to her toes. It is as though the pain pulses through her whole being, a great weight, heavy as a horse.

Should she have told her daddy about the letter? Would he have known, with great certainty, that her mammy had not written it? Had she shielded him from the truth, not knowing that the truth might have helped them find her?

She looks up, sees Rosie at the water’s edge.

‘Coming in?’ she asks, but Rosie shakes her head.

Violet swims over and Rosie bends down on her haunches, grasps Violet’s long wet hair, strung like weeds down her back, and pulls her gently over to the bank.

‘I brought some soap. Thought your hair could do with washing.’

Violet says nothing, but, treading water, she closes her eyes and lets Rosie massage the soap into her scalp. Rosie’s tiny fingers work quickly and methodically, small circles towards the base of her neck, larger ones up to the highest point of her forehead.

‘I must look a sight,’ says Violet. There is a languid quality to her voice Lena has rarely heard.

‘You’re perfect,’ says Rosie. ‘Just as you are.’

The two of them stay there a moment, Rosie’s hands resting on the base of Violet’s skull, Violet’s head thrown back, suspended in time, completely still.

‘Go on,’ says Rosie eventually. ‘You’re done now.’

Violet swims away, dunks her head under the surface to get rid of the suds. Lena falls back in the water too, convinced she will sink to the bottom like a stone, is almost surprised to find herself floating, weightless, staring up at the gaping blue sky. She thinks, briefly, of Violet, the way she launches herself through the air each night, on nothing but invisible wings, and possibly a prayer. How brave she is. To take that leap of faith, straight into the unknown.

She gazes over to where Violet is splashing in the water with Carmen, her long red hair clean now, gleaming in the sun. Violet, whom she has known all her life. Who is difficult and obstinate, and lets little Rosie wash her hair. How she loves her, she realises, this infuriating, blazing flame of a woman, her dearest friend, her sort of sister.

But before she can follow the thought, turn it over in her mind like a stone in her palm, Violet splashes over and dunks her head under the water, and all thoughts other than the sunshine, and the day ahead, are lost.